Pop Goddess

Oscar favorites usually underwhelm me (I’m looking’ at you, The King’s Speech!), but The Artist is a delightful exception. It’s a beautiful silent picture, an examination of the transition from silent films to the talkies, and an exploration of the experience of watching films, all rolled into a joyous love letter to the movies.

I’m a classic movie buff, but I’m usually annoyed and disappointed when present-day films try to emulate the classics. I think films like Down with Love, The Good German, and Red Tails are overly stylized, stilted, and airless. The filmmakers say they’re paying homage to films like Pillow Talk, Casablanca, or other WWII epics, but that doesn’t mean that the newer films should be sub-par according to current standards. I think the self-conscious attempts at mimicry, without real love and respect for the originals, ruin the so-called homages. And that’s how The Artist is gloriously different:  rather than just analyze elements of silent pictures and musicals from a critical distance, director Michael Hazanavicius seems to love the original classics. This full embrace of the originals allows him to make a film that is at once a faithful reproduction of a silent picture and an accessible, entertaining movie for present-day audiences.

The film that The Artist most evokes for me is Singin’ in the Rain, one of my all-time favorites. The 1952 musical played like an accompanying soundtrack in my head as I watched the new film.  Both films affectionately skewer Hollywood’s the assembly-line output (their leads walk through sets of drawing room dramas, westerns, train robberies, and jungle adventures, all shooting simultaneously). “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all!” a character says about studio pictures in Singin’ in the Rain; in a nod to that sentiment, The Artist’s films-within-the-film are named A Russian Affair and A German Affair, suggesting their interchangeability. At the same time, SitR and The Artist seem to respect the level of cinematic achievement that the best silent pictures represent; they also celebrate the musicals which the transition to sound makes possible. Jean Dujardin, playing silent film star George Valentin, resembles Gene Kelly and displays some of the inimitable Donald O’ Connor’s loose-limbed vaudevillian talents. George’s disgruntled co-star Constance seems patterned after SitR’s scheming Lena Lamont.  Constance’s awkward sound test, in which she plays Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene opposite a microphone rather than a Romeo, recalls Lena’s difficulty incorporating a microphone into her performance and her hilarious protest, “Well, I can’t make love to a bush!”  Bérénice Bejo’s Peppy is the modern incarnation of Debbie Reynolds’s Kathy Selden, the ingénue who encourages the silent film star into the era of the talkies. While Singin’ in the Rain deals with this transition with humor, The Artist explores it with more pathos, with an acknowledgment of the anxiety and sense of loss that accompany the process.

I think The Artist calls for a detailed scene-by-scene analysis, but I’ll limit this commentary to three sequences: the opening, George and Peppy shooting a scene together, and George’s dream.

The Artist opens with a scene from a film within the film, A Russian Affair. George’s character, presumably a spy, is being tortured for information. “I won’t say a word,” George’s character exclaims, via a title card. “Speak!” his tormentors pressure him. The exchange foreshadows the advent of the talkies and George’s resistance to it.  Then we cut to the movie theater audience watching A Russian Affair, establishing the communal experience of watching movies. The viewing experience is doubled, with us watching the audience watch the film within the film. Finally, the viewing experience is inverted, as we go behind the screen to watch George watching A Russian Affair in reverse on the back of the screen. The sequence is an amazing encapsulation of the multiple layers of viewership involved in watching The Artist, a film about the process of filmmaking.

My favorite sequence in The Artist centers on George and Peppy shooting a scene together. The scene requires George to cross a dance floor, dancing with Peppy for a few beats in the process. Peppy is just an extra in the scene, and George initially treats her as such, basically a prop he has to hold onto for a few moments to move the action forward. As they continue doing takes, however, George becomes increasingly aware of Peppy in his arms and of his feelings for her. She goes from being a prop to being his whole purpose for the scene. Eventually they’re so absorbed in each other that they just stand there in each other’s arms, the scene they’re supposed to be shooting forgotten. This tender progression, with all its subtle shifts in mood and intensity, is expressed without words.  It makes me wonder if the argument that silent pictures represent the art of cinema in its true form is valid; perhaps the essence of cinema is the communication of story and emotions through universally understood facial expressions and body language. George most likely feels that way, which explains why he dismisses talkies as a mere gimmick.

George may be dismissive, but his dream expresses a subconscious anxiety about what the transition to sound means for his career and the industry he loves. The dream sequence starts simply, with George setting a glass down on his dressing table. The sound of the glass clinking on the surface startles George, and the fact that we’re as surprised as he is points out how completely we’ve surrendered to the reality of the film. George’s surprise implies that he’s somehow watching himself in a film and that he doesn’t expect to hear that kind of sound. While he can hear the phone ringing, the dog barking, and traffic noises, however, he cannot hear his own voice. In a way the dream sequence is a surreal collision of George’s off-screen reality (where he’s able to hear sounds and his own voice) and onscreen existence (in which he wouldn’t be able to hear his voice or any other sounds).  The laughing chorus girls and the abandoned studio lot express George’s fears that his reluctance to embrace talkies will make him the laughingstock of the industry and that the new technology will mark the end of filmmaking as he knows it.

The dream ends with a feather falling to the ground with a deafening thunderclap. The disjunction points to one of the challenges of talkies, matching the aural and visual impressions on the screen. It also recalls the more lighthearted treatment of the problem in Singin’ in the Rain: at a preview screening of their first talking picture, The Dueling Cavalier, the filmmakers realize that all the sounds are off – a strand of pearls sliding through a woman’s fingers sounds like sandpaper rubbing together; a man’s walking stick dropping to the ground sounds like a falling boulder; a lady’s fan tapping her lover’s shoulder sounds like she’s “hitting him with a two-by-four,” as an audience member derisively suggests.

Both The Artist and Singin’ in the Rain point out that the same audiences who were entranced by silent pictures quickly outgrew them, thus outgrowing a particular depiction of reality. Both films, steeped in movie history and love for cinema, show actors and filmmakers struggling to reinvent the depiction of reality on screen to match audience’s new tastes, reinventing an art form and even their own lives in the process.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Take Shelter is a harrowing examination of the multiple layers of anxiety plaguing Curtis, an average working class man in a small-town America. Curtis suffers from unnervingly realistic nightmares, in which apocalyptic storms threaten him, his own dog viciously mauls him, strangers and even his wife attack him. Michael Shannon (robbed of Oscar recognition) makes Curtis’s sweaty, disorienting panic disturbingly palpable for the audience. The film’s seamless editing ensures that we, like Curtis, question if what we’re seeing is real, waking hallucination, or dream.

Curtis’s nightmares reflect the personal and societal pressures that weigh on him everyday. First of all, he’s worried that his dreams signal the onset of paranoid schizophrenia, which afflicted his mother when she was his age. Curtis also faces the anxiety of a blue collar worker trying to provide for and protect his family. The film connects his personal anxiety to the broader context of our current economic recession, job insecurity, and financial instability: people keep telling Curtis that he better not get fired because new jobs are hard to find; the bank advises Curtis against unsustainable loans; his brother warns him about running up credit card debt (Curtis is trying to find extra cash to build a storm shelter to protect himself and his family from the tornadoes and toxic rain that appear repeatedly in his dreams).

Take Shelter also highlights the average family’s anxieties about health care and inadequate health insurance. Curtis deals with a lack of control in his own medical care – after the counselor he finally opens up to is abruptly replaced, he faces the prospect of repeating his history and trauma to an new counselor. He struggles with the vagaries of health insurance: higher than expected co-pays, difficulty getting approval for a surgery his daughter needs. When Curtis eventually loses his job because of his erratic behavior, he loses his health benefits and jeopardizes his daughter’s health care. The situation is an argument for a national health care system if I ever saw one.

Through Curtis’s apocalyptic dreams, Take Shelter even addresses global environmental fears; Curtis sees birds drop dead from the sky by the hundreds; the toxic rain resembles brown sludge he digs up at his construction work site all day, as he bulldozes the earth and tears down trees. The film suggests that Curtis has concerns, perhaps still subconscious, about the environmental legacy of his disruptive, invasive work.

So are his dreams prophesies of an impending apocalypse or his psyche’s attempts to process the myriad anxieties which plague him every day? The film doesn’t resolve the ambiguity for us. Even Curtis himself isn’t sure whether he’s going crazy or if he’s a prophet. It’s a testament to Michael Shannon’s skill that he enables his character to pursue both possibilities with equal conviction, and it’s a testament to the film’s strength that it allows us to draw our own conclusions from its compelling ambiguity.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Melancholia tells the story of Justine, a young woman crushed by crippling depression, as a microcosm of the earth being destroyed by a collision with the planet Melancholia. In the first half of the film, Justine unravels under the weight of her depression; in the second half of the film, as the apparently capable and in-control people around her fall apart in the face of impending cosmic disaster, she regains clarity and strength.

Kirsten Dunst’s performance is, quite simply, revelatory; I can’t believe she wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. She conveys the strain of Justine’s attempts to force herself to be happy on her wedding day at the beginning of the film. We sense the massive effort it takes for Justine to put on a happy face, to try to convince herself that after all, she has every reason to be happy. Ms. Dunst skillfully telegraphs the tiny shifts in Justine’s mood as the joy seeps out of the day, as she withdraws and turns increasingly inward. It’s not a matter of will; she wants to able to take joy in her new husband’s love, in their beautiful wedding day, but the depression makes her physically incapable of it. The film crystallizes Justine’s helplessness under the weight of her depression in a later scene in the film: Justine’s sister Claire attempts to coax her out of near-catatonia by preparing one of Justine’s favorite meals for her. Claire hopes that this simple pleasure can make a small crack in the wall of Justine’s depression. After a few expectant bites, Justine breaks into tears and says despairingly, “It tastes like ashes.” Ms. Dunst makes clear that this isn’t for lack of desire – Justine wants the food to taste good, to bring her joy, to serve as a lifeline out of the blackness, but she is powerless against the strength of the depression.

Yet somehow, as the planet Melancholia continues on its collision course with earth, Justine slowly comes out of her catatonic state. She seems able to accept, without panic, that the world is going to end. In fact, she seems to know it as a certainty. That certainty allows her to prepare her sister Claire, who until now was the capable, strong one, for the end. The film contrasts Justine’s trajectory specifically with that of her brother-in-law, John. Throughout the film, John is matter-of-fact to the point of being almost ruthless, with a pragmatic arrogance in his own abilities and rationality. When Claire buys poison to ensure a painless end for her family in the worst case scenario, John chastises her for her weakness. However, when it becomes clear that the Melancholia is indeed going to hit, John crumbles and takes all the pills himself, abandoning his family and robbing them of the option of a quick death.  Justine seems to come into her own as disaster nears. I hesitate to facilely attribute a “purpose” to depression, as though it’s some sort of gift in disguise, but, in the film at least, Justine’s depression, her experience of being crushed by hopelessness and a sense of the futility of it all, actually prepares her for the same experience on a cosmic scale.

Early in the film, as her depression closes in on her, Justine wanders around the garden distracted and disconnected from her surroundings. One night during her slow recovery, she enters the garden again, this time to lie down naked on the earth and bask in the moonlight. Justine radiates tranquility, somehow connected with and grounded in her environment. Justine revels in her body and in the moonlight in an echo of an earlier scene in which her mother performs the “suryanamaskar” yoga pose, welcoming the sun. The sun-moon juxtaposition both connects and contrasts Justine with her mother, identifying each of them with two different elemental energies. The film identifies Justine with the moon, which, with its 28-day cycle, evokes the female menstrual cycle. So the film associates Justine with a symbol of womanhood, of shared female experience. Claire is also part of this sororal community because she’s an observer in this scene, watching in silent awe as Justine basks in the moonlight like a sylvan goddess.

This image of female community contrasts with the circle of men in Justine’s life: her irresponsible, passive-aggressive father; manipulative, overbearing boss; arrogant, ultimately weak brother-in-law; and her adoring yet inadequate husband.  Justine frees herself from her boss and her husband, is abandoned by her father and John, and yet ultimately emerges the stronger for it. Melancholia privileges Justine and Claire’s sororal, empathetic relationship over the ruthlessly pragmatic or ineffectual masculine relationships.

Their feminine community is not about excluding men (their circle includes Claire’s son), but about a different way of caring, based not on patriarchal hierarchies but on nurturing collectives. This feminine empathy is also not about false comfort – Justine never pretends that Melancholia is not going to destroy the Earth, and she rather harshly dismisses Claire’s suggestions to romanticize the end with wine and music. Yet she loves Claire enough to support what is ultimately the most important thing for Claire – Claire’s son. Justine lovingly and calmly takes care of her nephew as the end approaches. They build a “magic cave” of tree branches together and, with Claire, await the end in its sheltering embrace. Justine makes it possible for the boy to feel calm and safe even as death approaches. Thanks to Justine, he faces death with the assurance of being loved and protected. This turns out to be the greatest gift she could give Claire, since Claire’s deepest sorrow is for her son. Justine is able to provide Claire with that gift because her depression, her sense that her life may as well end, prepares her for the actual end of the world.

Safe House starts with an intriguing, Bourne-like premise, then unfortunately devolves into a demolition derby of boring car chases and mindless killing. Now don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a good car chase, one that exhilarates you with surprising staging and even reveals something about the participants (see Bourne Identity and Supremacy, The Italian Job, Ronin). Characters in Safe House are introduced only to be killed moments later; there’s no time for emotional investment, and the bloodshed feels gratuitous.

The few quiet moments, when Denzel Washington subtly displays rogue CIA agent Tobin Frost’s intelligence and skill for reading people and situations, are interrupted by yet another car chase or loud shoot-out. It’s as though the filmmakers don’t have faith in the writing or in the actors to sustain interesting, revealing human interaction. This is disappointing given the caliber of actors the film brings together – Denzel, obviously, but also Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga (always able to imbue her characters with intelligence and texture), Brendan Gleeson, and The Killing‘s Joel Kinnaman, effective in a small part. While the other actors aren’t given the opportunity to flesh out their characters, Denzel invests the amoral, confident, fiercely intelligent Tobin Frost with more nuance and depth than the script actually provides. I think it’s a top-tier performance in a sub-par film.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Luck by Chance, the debut film by writer-director Zoya Akhtar, is a behind-the-scenes look at the Hindi film industry, complete with divas of yesteryear, self-serving producers, reigning superstars, and struggling newcomers. The movie’s strength lies in its careful observations of these characters, which provide insights into their motivations and insecurities.

The film follows Vikram (Farhan Akhtar), a young man from Delhi hoping to break into the Mumbai film industry. It’s a virtually impossible task, since Bollywood runs on nepotism, a fact which Ms. Akhtar’s film affectionately skewers. Without making Vikram an outright “negative” character, the movie takes a clear-eyed look at his uncanny ability to say and do the right thing at the right time, his skillful use of flattery to advance his fledgling career, and his willingness to exploit and discard others along the way.  Opportunistic, or simply smartly ambitious? For the most part, the film lets us decide for ourselves.

The one person willing to point out Vikram’s unsettling tendencies is his girlfriend Sona, played with earthy authenticity by Konkona Sen Sharma. Sona is a struggling actress paying her dues in bit roles and B-movies in the hope of eventually making it big. What is remarkable to me is the film’s refreshingly non-judgmental depiction of Sona’s sexual relationships with her agent and with Vikram. Unusually for a Hindi film, here is a woman who has sex and isn’t “punished” by humiliation, childbirth, and/or death.

The scene that launches Luck by Chance onto the list of my all-time favorite films is one in which Vikram finally sees the error of his ways and apologizes to Sona for dumping her for his more famous co-star. He says all the right things (as usual) about how Sona is the only one with whom he can be himself, how she is his conscience and his support. This is usually the point in Hindi films where the heroine forgives and takes back the hero, leaving me annoyed that yet another self-absorbed man has managed to get the woman; somehow even his reformation is self-centered. So imagine my amazement when Sona actually verbalizes that frustration. She points out to Vikram that everything about his apology is still about him – how he needs her, how she serves a purpose in his life; he ignores Sona’s personhood and doesn’t really think about what may be best for her. So she decides for herself, choosing a life and career independent of him. Sona remains compassionate while calling Vikram out for his selfishness, telling him the truth not with acrimony, but with mature self-confidence and self-awareness.

The film itself is similarly compassionate and self-aware: it gently satirizes icons of the Hindi movie industry while affording them dignity and respect; it mocks Bollywood’s obsession with spectacle while creating its own stunning visual and musical spectacles. Ms. Akhtar herself simultaneously highlights the industry’s nepotism while drawing on her own connections (she is the daughter of writers Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, and sister of director/actor Farhan Akhtar)  to enrich her accomplished debut feature.